My father and I sat on the porch and watched her back out of his driveway. She ran over a bit of his lawn in the process. I kept crossing and recrossing my arms. He asked me what had happened with the bicycle and the boy. I told him the story. “Hmm,” he said. His hands were on the porch railing. It creaked under his weight. Lying to him felt intolerable.

“I mean, that’s what I told Mom,” I said.

He nodded, as if he had known all along. But he didn’t look at me, and so after a moment I told him the true story. The true story began like this: I was standing with my bicycle on the corner, down the street from my house, and a boy approached me and said, “I like your tits.”

“Oh,” I said, looking down at them, new swollen things. “Thanks.” I did not yet know not to be flattered in these scenarios. The boy wasn’t ugly, but he wasn’t handsome either.

“Do you know what a pussy is?” he asked. (I blushed as I reported this, both to my father and again, years later, to Luke, but it felt like an important part of the story.)

“Yes,” I said. I was thirteen, after all. Back then I knew everything.

“It’s this,” he said, and pressed two fingers between my legs, right there on the sidewalk, in the middle of the day. I took a step backward.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Nice bike,” he said, shifting his attention easily, my pussy and my ten-speed being of about equal interest to him. He asked if he could ride it around the block.

“Just once?” I said. Just once, he assured me. My heart was beating fast. I handed it over and he hopped on and pedaled away. Shocking twist: he did not come back. I waited for a long time, and eventually stomped home to tell my mother that I had been pushed, yes, pushed off my bike, through absolutely no fault or stupidity of my own.

“You lied to the police?” my father asked at the end.

“Yes,” I said, miserably. I waited; he didn’t say anything, and after a minute or two he eased himself up off the railing and went into the house. I was sure I would hear him lock the door, because I was a criminal now, a deviant to be barred from all decent homes, but he left it open. I could hear him walking around behind those thin transportable walls. Soon he came back outside and sat beside me. He pressed a small jade figurine into my hand.

“I was going to wait and give this to you on your birthday,” he said. “But I think you should have it now.”